Although Dr. DOA, by Simon R. Green, is the 10th book in the Secret Histories series, this is my first venture out with Eddie Drood AKA Shaman Bond and his girlfriend/sidekick Molly Metcalf, the wild witch of the woods. Dr. DOA does a good job in the beginning of laying out the premise, so I had no problem getting up to speed well enough, but I will say that it is pretty clear that Drood and Metcalf's history is fairly storied, if not a bit checkered... but more on that later.

Dr. DOA starts off with Eddie Drood trying to enjoy Christmas in his isolated cabin with his girlfriend, Molly Metcalf. Naturally, he is disturbed by his family with an urgent need for him to drop everything and return to the Drood Family Hall. Family, am I right? It seems a company called Cassandra Inc. is selling the future, that is, the info on future happenings, and nobody corners the market on cool stuff except the Drood Family. Eddie is dispatched to take care of the situation, with Molly in tow, and nothing goes according to plan. For starters, an old associate of Molly's named the Manichean Monk intercepts the pair on their way to the mission with designs to kill Eddie. Like robotic directive designs - like he's gonna kill Eddie at any cost, which is weird because he's normally an okay kinda guy. After getting past that impediment, then having a strange interaction with an angel, and getting into a few tough scrapes, the pair return to Drood Hall. When Eddie is thoroughly examined, they find out a terrible truth - he is dying. Not only is he merely dying, but he has been poisoned by the assassin known only as Dr. DOA - a man who always kills the victims he is hired to dispatch and with a poison only he can cure. Is Eddie going to just lay down and die? Hell no! He's a Drood and his new mission is to find his own killer.

As his health declines, he finds that the only thing sustaining him is his special Drood protective golden armour and the imposing torc he wields. He and Molly will have to travel to all manner of places to get info on the elusive Dr. DOA because really, no one wants to discuss the man lest they end up on his kill list. The pair will change into their alternate personas, Shaman Bond and Roxie Hazzard, a few times, they'll encounter more old-friends-turned-killer-murder-robots gunning for Eddie, and Molly will even have to touch base with her old crew, from back when she was a supernatural terrorist. However, the most shocking event of all comes when Eddie discovers who Dr. DOA really is and he and Molly find themselves in one hell of a predicament, with no escape. And then the book ends. Damn you, cliffhanger!

Like I said, I haven't read any of the Secret Histories series before, so maybe they all end on a cliffhanger, but I doubt it. Fortunately, the newest book, Moonbreaker, is just on the horizon, so I won't have to wait long to find out what happens.

I enjoyed my foray into Eddie Drood's life and the book is chock full of punny names and such (like Drood's and Druids, for example), in case you didn't get that from the James Bond parody title. As Molly and Eddie talk about old times, I can't help but feel like I am missing out on a whole bunch of inside stories that long-timer readers of the series will know and will probably be saying, "Yeah, I remember the time..." - insert crazy Eddie/Molly story here. I am interested to see where the series goes and maybe even enough to go back and start the series from the beginning to play catch up. If you aren't a fan of British writing and punny wit, you may not get as much enjoyment from the series, but Eddie Drood and Molly Metcalf are a fun couple who get up to all sorts of shenanigans and I want to see more.